Rising Smoke Synergy
Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of
Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over
to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection
available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJqlq0uOjCU
When I first come across a hot sauce company, one of the things I will do is go to their website and sift around a bit to see what the other offerings might be. Sauces of interest will then get put on my running hit list and I'll try to get to them in one of the next major haul shopping trips I make to Burn Your Tongue. For this company, I had a few on there, as I like the idea of basing sauces around either smoke or fire-roasted items. But to be blunt, their execution on the other sauces left a lot to be desired, to the point where it was down to the wire if I was going to bother getting the other names on the hit list from them. This was, in that respect, a make or break sauce.
It's kind of funny...there have been years when I've had the Huy Fong chili-garlic sauce in my fridge and that's the only Asian type hot sauce for long stretches. Somehow, in 2022, I have quite a few, including this one. This one, however, is definitely one of the more fascinating sauces I think I've come across. Much of this has to do with mirin, which is a sake. In the winters, I certainly have been known to like my sake and it's an ingredient I almost never see in hot sauces. So, my interest, as they say, was piqued. Tamari, which is somewhat of an exotic ingredient in sauces, compared to its relative soy sauce, is also here and now I'm really curious.
This sauce, for me, rather redeemed the company and the aforementioned hit list. This reminds me a lot of the sauce that's left over after you have a really good sweet & sour chicken. I'm not talking about one of those trashy gloppy frozen ones or the goop you might find in a mall food court, but an actual bona fide quality sweet & sour. [Note: I usually have to make it myself to get it to the right level.] In that sauce, you get a bit of sweet tropical deliciousness (and maybe a faint bit of carmelization) from the pineapple, a good melding with the cooked-down peppers, along with that umami note from the soy sauce, along with the finish note grace of sesame oil (if you use it there). The taste is not identical, but was so strongly reminiscent of a great version of that, that I've now read, closely, the ingredient panel a good dozen times, trying to see if pineapple is listed.
It is not. For sweets, we have agave, orange juice, and dark brown sugar, yet it comes together in a way that is strongly reminiscent of that aforementioned sauce. Meanwhile, the mirin dances around playfully with it all, after the initial hit, in way that sets it apart and is near magical. Underneath all that, one also picks up the hints of smoke and the nice build of heat from the Habaneros. Now, the mirin is definitely forceful out of the gate, in a way that I find a bit jarring. This sauce is rather alpha-omega in that it is definitely sort of its own thing. The more you can use it in a standalone setting, the better off, particularly if you put it on a lighter meat with a fairly high salt content, that can contrast with the delicate harmony of the other sauce notes.
Flexibility is a touch on the low side, as this sauce seems to want to be itself, by itself, and tends not to play well with other foods overall. Pizza was a bust. Chicken strips are ok, after the initial mirin hit, but I didn't love this there. It's too sweet for a lot of other foods. On Asian foods...spring rolls were fine, but putting it on actual composed dishes not sweet & sour chicken (or pork) was decidedly not great. The sauce has a strong identity and it is not a neutral one. I will say for it, though, that it is rather fun playing around with other foods to see where it might go. It's a pretty enjoyable experiment, even if the results aren't always great, sometimes not really even good. Heat-wise, it's quite moderate, as one might expect with the Habaneros.
Bottom line: Very novel, very creative sauce, and definitely the best I've had from the company, which is saved, at least for now, from being stricken off the hit list entirely. If you like Asian foods and sauces, this is a must.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 4
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6
Overall: 5
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